Stalker 2 preview: Huge mod support and post-launch roadmap confirmed

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Like many, I was very anxious when Stalker 2 was first announced in 2018, but GSC Game World created something quite remarkable with Stalker 2, and a few hours alone was enough to tell me as much.

The developers have struck a very good balance between accommodating old and new players alike. Make no mistake, though, it is Stalker 2, not the originals, so it is different, but you would hope so after 15 years since the last game.

Crucially, they have not reinvented the wheel, with the systemic emergent gameplay that made the originals so special making a return and then some.

If you were worried things would be watered down for modern gaming sensibilities, fret not, for it is quite unrelenting with its difficulty and oppressive atmosphere, and makes no pretence about the Zone wanting you dead.

But under whose authority, might you ask? Mine. I have played through the originals countless times, and played just about every mod out there - including Lost Alpha, Oblivion Lost, Gunslinger, Misery, Anomaly and GAMMA.

I’ve done it all, and yes, I know about the Sunrise suit in Cordon, so don’t bother getting Cheeki-Breeki with me, because I am a Stalker-sicko.

Before we get carried away, though, some context is required. As many will no doubt be aware, GSC Game World is a Ukrainian studio who have gone through unimaginable hardships since the Russian invasion of their home nation in 2022.

The developers at GSC Game World detailed their experiences living through this and opening their office in Prague (which also suffered a fire in the server room) in the documentary War Game: The Making of STALKER 2, which I highly recommend you sit through.

It’s not an easy watch, but we owe it to the developers, who have fought tooth and nail to deliver Stalker 2 under the most stressful conditions.

I bring this up because, while I did experience some bugs (with other members of the press suffering the occasional crash), in the given circumstances, I think it’s entirely understandable – so I won’t be commenting much on that besides this note.

Anyway, the original games – if we’re being honest – were pretty broken, and we loved them nonetheless.

But onto Stalker 2 itself!

I got to play through the first two episodes of Stalker 2, with Episode One starting with a cutscene very reminiscent of the opening to Shadow of Chernobyl, with a lorry driving through a storm, while lightning strikes land all around.

In the back is Skif, Heart of Chornobyl’s protagonist.

With the storm getting stronger and stronger, the driver, Hermann, crashes into a wall. Luckily, it’s our destination.

We’ve been tasked with scanning the Zone with some sort of special scanner, itself powered by a mysterious artefact Skif is in possession of.

Not much is revealed about these characters or even why we should care, but the stakes are so high that I found myself immediately sucked in.

After this short introduction, we can take control of Skif and find ourselves at the outer perimeter wall of the Zone. Already we can see the effect anomalies are having on humanity's feeble attempts to contain it.

Before I actually made my way into the Zone, I was struck by the otherworldly and bizarrely serene beauty of Stalker 2.

In front of me was a Grav-anomaly that had ripped out a huge chunk of the wall, suspending the rubble in the air, with the fragments catching glints of moonlight.

Powering all this is a custom fork of Unreal Engine 5.1, affectionately known as '5.1.GSC' owing to the amount of work required to shoehorn it to fit GSC Game World’s needs. Technical Producer Yevhenii Kulyk shed light on the how they wrangled the beast.

"To make [a] world this big, we had to adapt and [rewrite] and upgrade some tools that were provided by... the basic Unreal Engine to fit our needs to create [this] world."

Unreal Engine 5 has not performed particularly well on PCs, with issues such as shader compilation and traversal stutters plaguing most releases.

Noting that my playthrough was fairly smooth (though shaders may have been compiled by a previous playthrough), I asked Kulyk for more details on what work has been done to whittle Unreal Engine 5 into shape.

"To meet our expectations… for optimization for Xbox and PCs as well, we made [a lot] of changes to basically render threads, some CPU optimisations, a lot of RAM optimisations."

With the finish line in sight, Kulyk was keen to stress the amount of progress they had made.

"For now, we are pretty much close to finishing [the] whole polishing process. So our aim is to provide the game that is running constantly [with] stable FPS and with stable performance all the time."

How well the game holds up on other PCs remains to be seen. I couldn’t see what specs the PC I was using had, but the person next to me had a system with an Nvidia RTX 4090 inside it. The game was running well on Xbox Series X at Gamescom, though, which is promising.

Proceeding forward, I dived straight into Episode One, which serves as a tutorial for the game. This is Stalker through and through, though, and it doesn’t hold back.

Immediately, I was navigating anomalies, mutants and bandits as I carried out my scanning.

Things predictably went south quickly, with scientists that I was supposed to meet all being dead in their outpost.

Upon exiting, a bloodsucker was waiting to greet me too.

Eventually, I reached the last spot I needed to scan, but not before the military showed up, before they too were interrupted by a rather rude sniper. Such is life in the Zone.

During moments like this, control is taken away from the player, and a cutscene will play from the first-person perspective. For a game that is as open-ended as Stalker, it feels a little at odds with itself.

The sequences are well-made and directed, it is just a little jarring to so suddenly have control taken away from the player in a way more akin to Call of Duty.

Later in my gameplay, I was walking down a hallway when suddenly the camera lurched to a door that I wanted to walk past – which gave me quite the fright, in all honesty.

But after surviving the ambush, Skif is happened upon by a mysterious figure and what looked to be members of Monolith.

Skif is spared by the man accompanying Monolith and is knocked out, ending Episode One.

Afterwards, Skif wakes up to a blind dog nibbling his toes, before he punts them into a Grav-anomaly.

An amused Stalker who was watching on passes Skif a bolt to navigate his way out of the anomaly field. From here, the game opens up and players are free to do as they wish, in true Stalker fashion.

Episode Two takes place in a region known as the Lesser Zone, which feels like an expansion of the iconic Cordon area.

Upon opening the PDA, it’s immediately clear that the map is very different, and much, much larger for players to get lost in and make their own stories.

You will notice some familiar locales, but the ordering of them is all new. It all looks magnificent, and is a source of pride for Kulyk and the rest of the team.

"I'm really proud of, first of all, [the] digitalisation of the map, because we barely used any procedural generation for this world. And everything you saw today and you saw in [the release] is made by hand [by] our [guys]."

Unlike its predecessors, the world map in Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl has no barriers. In those games, you could aggravate enemies and run away to load into the next section of the map to evade them. But with an open world, I wondered if bandits would simply chase you down from one end to the other, or if they would back off before encroaching on hostile territory.

Curious, I pressed Kulyk.

"It basically depends on the faction, and it definitely depends on the monster type you met. So some of them are protecting their territory, because our A-Life system, 2.0, is built, first of all, on several pillars."

The A-Life system in the original games was revolutionary at the time, and truly helped bring the world to life as NPCs would go about their business regardless of the player's actions.

"First of all, they have [offline mode]. [Constantly] some events are happening in the back end. So you may notice that during your gameplay. And of course, you may notice [the] results of maybe some firefights or maybe some mutant encounter that was attacked by NPCs or vice versa."

In terms of how the county lines are formed so to speak, Kulyk went on to describe how the NPCs exist in the Zone.

"So they have their, like, let's say natural habitat areas, and some of these factions, or some of these monsters may roam around the map and try to catch the players. So there's constantly life in front of the player, and, of course, behind their eyes."

After navigating the anomaly field, I opted to speak to the Stalker who found me. The dialogue system is more in line with what we would expect from a Bethesda game rather than how the originals worked.

There are multiple choices, and quite often, an option to initiate combat if you so wish.

Skif is quite a curt man, so his dialogue options aren’t exactly sprawling, but there’s enough on offer to afford the player some real agency.

After everything has gone pear-shaped, though, Skif is looking for answers, and the kind Stalker points us in the direction of a nearby settlement.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to spend the time stopping to smell the irradiated roses, though. Episode Two begins in daylight, and I couldn’t help but gawk at the scenery once more as it was flooded by a warm glow.

Also helping bring the Zone to life is the immaculate sound design. The ominous groans of anomalies, mutants and distant gunfire all help make the world feel like a living, breathing entity.

The voice acting and performances are top-notch, too. I played with Ukranian dialogue, but the provided B-roll shows off the great English voice acting too.

But with my PDA beeping away with quests to do, I made my way.

On my travels, I came across an old settlement with bandits surrounding a house with a fellow Stalker trapped inside. Visions of being harassed by bandits in the previous games sent me in guns blazing for some sweet Zone-justice.

Gunplay is brutal, frenetic and chaotic. It’s definitely taken a page out of Stalker mods Anomaly and GAMMA. Oftentimes, it can be over as quickly as it started.

The weapons feel suitably weighty, and the action of shooting is very satisfying. You really need to plan your shots and manage recoil. Ammo is scarce, but your bullets dish out as much damage as you take, so enemies can quite quickly go down with a well-placed headshot.

You'll need to keep an eye on your weapon's condition, too. The Zone is a dirty, rough place, and your gear can deteriorate quickly. A battered gun is going to jam when you really don't want it to, as I quickly discovered.

With crumbling guns and the bandits somehow dispatched, the Stalker inside, Zhorik, reveals his friend Gloomy is in trouble as well.

Being the Stalker veteran I am, I foolishly agree to help them. A short way up the road is an old warehouse with around five or six bandits guarding it.

Feeling confident after my last gunfight, I walk right up and take out the first bandit I see. Others quickly descend to where he fell and where they heard the shots. Soon, I am met with a wall of fire and grenades landing at my feet.

The enemies call out to one another to signpost to the player what they are intending to do. But just because you know their intentions, it doesn't make it any easier.

After a few false starts, I eventually manage to clear out all the bandits and talk to Gloomy who is suitably unimpressed, and also very unhappy with Zhorik who seems to have gotten everyone in this mess in the first place.

This is a recurring theme in Stalker, and perhaps more so in Stalker 2. Everyone is in it for themselves, and people won’t hesitate to hang you out to dry.

Quite often, you are commended for not getting involved or for backstabbing someone. Morality doesn’t keep you alive in the Zone; bullets and wits do.

Eventually, I made my way to the town where the true Stalker vibes came to life with people sitting around campfires, playing the guitar and sharing stories from their time in the Zone.

Night was beginning to fall, and the warmth of the fire made the unimaginable horrors of the Zone melt away.

But with the clock running down, I made my way into the local bar and spoke to barkeep Warlock, who pointed me in the direction of the Gaffer.

After a brief introduction, the Ward, a quasi-military police faction that tries to contain and maintain law in the Zone, made themselves known. They were very angry that some of their soldiers were killed and were looking for a man named Squint. It turns out this just so happens to be the very same person we’re after.

When you’re asked if you know them, the dialogue option is time-sensitive. I made my choice before this ran out, but it could prove for an interesting path if you didn’t.

From here, you can either help the Ward track Squint down or help the Gaffer out and find out where he is via other means.

Being a true loner sick of big government, I of course helped the Gaffer out with a few things around town.

Doing these odd jobs, exploring and getting into scrapes, I was struck by just how much the game feels like Stalker Anomaly at times. Kulyk wore his inspirations on his sleeve.

"Of course, we are watching the mod-making community and the amazing work that they done [through] all of these years. [For] me, I'm playing [a] lot of Anomaly, I'm playing a lot of GAMMA, of course. And other than that, we have some of our colleagues that were basically the mod makers for the original games as well."

Arguably, Stalker has been helped kept alive over the years by such mods. GSC Game World has already committed to creating a modding toolkit, but unlike in the past, these toolkits can often be quite limited in scope. Again, Kuylk wanted to ease any concerns.

"We're basically creating and preparing the very big toolkit that will be that will provide the mod makers with basically all necessary tools to create mods from, like the smallest one to, like, big, total conversions."

It will no doubt take some time for modders to create large-scale projects, so my attention turned to GSC for any future content. After Shadow of Chernobyl in 2007, we got Clear Sky and Call of Pripyat in fairly short order. I asked Kulyk if we can expect any similar sequel/prequel treatment.

"I will not spoil that at this moment."

It’s not a foregone conclusion, and when asked about a New Game Plus mode where players could more freely explore the Zone, Kulyk could be a bit more open.

"We're currently in development of some kind of a post-launch roadmap, and I think we'll be able to share details [pretty] soon."

Now, it wouldn’t be Stalker without a big emission, and I was treated to the spectacle while returning to town after clearing out a military base (my stealth skills are not so great).

Everyone ran into the cellar for cover and the Stalkers began to pass the time. Some were sleeping, others exercising, many were drinking. This moment alone felt far more alive than any of the prior games, and highlighted just how equal we as the player are to the NPCs who inhabit the Zone.

Many games are power fantasies, which can be great fun, but it’s so refreshing to play something that is truly challenging. The game never felt that unfair. The Zone is a dangerous place, and none of us (except for Scar in Clear Sky perhaps) can survive its deadly emissions.

No doubt you may find yourself in a hovel you thought was safe, only to have bandits seeking protection descending upon you.

With the emission over, I was straight back into the Zone. Even for an old-timer, I was constantly surprised by how the Zone has changed over the years. NPC behaviours are quite different, for instance.

Waiting for a Flesh to get closer before I blasted them with a sawn-off, I nearly fell out of my chair when it instead leapt at me, delivering a devastating blow.

Not surprising, though, was when looking for artefacts in a cave, I panicked when a bloodsucker emerged from the darkness and came for me.

Predictably, I wasted all my bullets as I blindly fired all around me. In sheer terror, I began running around dropping grenades at my feet in hopes of the Zone providing a miracle.

Somehow, with barely a sliver of health left, I pulled it off.

A few sausages, loaves of bread and bottles of vodka sorted out my health and radiation poisoning, and I made my way back to town. I joined the others at the campfire, sat down and it really hit me.

It was Stalker.

After the preview finished, those of us in attendance began swapping stories from the Zone. In just a short few hours, we too had become Stalkers ourselves.

I walked away from my time with Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl relieved, impressed and in awe.

Being such a fan of the originals and feeling let down by so many sequels to other beloved franchises, never in my wildest of dreams could I have thought that Stalker 2 would be shaping up to be this good. The fact that development has taken place during a war is astounding.

With some luck and unbelievable resolve from GSC Game World, we’ll find the rest of the game holds up too when the game launches on 20th November 2024.

Until then, I will be waiting with great anticipation. The Zone and its enigmatic beauty has lured me in once again.

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